Rolls-Royce/VTT/Aalto University bridge 2025 concepts

Horatio Hornblower meets Jean-Luc Picard on the ship’s bridge of 2025 as Finnish applied research organization VTT and Rolls-Royce present their vision of seafaring ten years from now. Presented in 3D animation videos that projects current technology to the near future, the study shows a world where ship captains call on heads-up displays and high-tech workstations turn the bridge into an augmented reality command and control system.

What will the bridges of tugs, cargo ships, and platform supply vessels be like in 2025? Rolls-Royce Marine, VTT, and Aalto University have attempted to answer that question as part of a Finnish Metals and Engineering Competence Cluster (FIMECC) User experience and usability in complex systems (UXUS) program. The project, which wound up in 2013, was based on studies of crew operations, and drew on input from crew members, ship captains and first mates. The resulting augmented bridge workstation designs have been converted into 3D animations produced by TrollVFX.

A major part of the program is the Rolls-Royce OX concept, which presents a personalized bridge that’s more like something out of Thunderbirds than Moby Dick. The conventional helm is replaced by a workstation that identifies different users and adjusts the helm station to custom presets for chair adjustment, and control and display configurations. The windows form an adjustable heads-up display with visual augmentation that enhances situational awareness. With this, the captain can “see through” the deck, so a crewman is visible on the augmented display even if the deck or equipment is in the way.

The screen can also show the route of one’s own ship and others, obstacles hidden by fog and other weather conditions, thermal night vision, sea ice conditions along the planned route, share points of view with deckhands and enhance them with augmented markers, and share information in real time between two vessels.

"The project has successfully combined experience-driven design, in-depth psychological and operational analysis of tasks, and the envisioning of future technological solutions, and has packaged them in the form of impressive, futuristic videos that will inspire actors in this field to adopt user experience based solutions," says UXUS Manager Maaria Nuutinen.
The heads-up display shows information from other ships

Another FIMECC UXUS project, which is ongoing and involves VTT, Rolls-Royce Marine and University of Tampere, is looking at remote control of ships as a way of improving efficiency and safety, and cutting energy costs. The partners point out that remote control from the bridge or ashore are already used for some ship operations and that it would be possible to remotely operate a vessel using current technology. However, legal clearance and public approval would be required.

The project studying remote ship operation is scheduled to continue until 2015.

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By 2025, the first batch of autonomous vehicles will be driving through your neighborhood. But what about cargo ships? They’ll still have humans at the helm–at least most of the time–and this is the augmented reality bridge they’ll use to traverse the high seas.

The massive tiller and towering consoles are gone, replaced with minimalist workstations facing floor-to-ceiling windows that serve as a vast head-up display. The ship’s navigation information is overlaid in front of the crew, along with other vessel’s routes and obstacles that could be obscured by fog or rain. At night, thermal cameras display live video over the window to let watchmen keep tabs on what’s ahead.

After inputting the ship’s destination, the navigation system determines the most economical route and uses a sea ice analyzer to avoid a Titanic redux.

The bridge concept was developed by the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Rolls-Royce. Beyond its multiton, high-dollar luxury barges, Rolls has a storied history in maritime development, building and developing engines, along with a host of other marine and aviation systems.

The bridge of the future also extends to tug boats, with the OX concept that automatically detects the captain and then configures the workstation to both their size and needs. The user interface is fully adjustable for usability and visibility, and places augmented reality markers on the ship it’s towing to help with deckhand placement, predict the route of the vessel, and get real-time winch information.

But autonomous systems are going to make their way into large vessels in the near future, and VTT and Rolls-Royce are already working on the first round of systems, which initially include remote controls that can be commanded from the bridge or on land.

“In terms of the technology required, operating a container vessel by remote control is already a real possibility,” VTT says in a release. “However, before fully unmanned vessels can be launched on seas, widespread public approval is also required.”

That’s going to happen before Rolls and VTT make the bridge of the future a reality, with plans to deploy the first remote-controlled ship in the coming years.

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The future of marine and offshore navigation may not be as awesome as flying an F/A-18 Super Hornet, but Rolls-Royce did a really good job at making it look that way.

Rolls-Royce just released an overview of the future bridge operation experience concept (oX) today, developed in cooperation with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, which provides a glimpse of new technology which could become reality by 2025.

Oskar Levandar, VP Innovation, Engineering & Technology at Rolls-Royce says one of the keys to future cost savings by ship owners will be reducing the number of crew on board the vessel. To do that however, the onboard systems must be “smarter,” to operate automatically, and provide a much more easier to understand user interface.

Advancing technology, such as the oX concept, will also enable much safer and efficient operations as well.

This is the entire premise of their “Ship Intelligence” concept.

Building on that, Rolls-Royce believes “unmanned ships will be one of the most fundamental changes that we will experience in shipping in our lifetimes.”

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